


The Staring Thing

by DarkWitchOfErie



Category: Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard - Rick Riordan
Genre: Also I tagged f/m and m/m because Alex changes gender part way through, F/M, Halfborn and TJ are mentioned but don't have speaking parts, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-09-01 23:20:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8642179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkWitchOfErie/pseuds/DarkWitchOfErie
Summary: "No, everything is NOT alright! I need you to talk to your stupid friend and tell him to quit staring at me!""Oh Alex, honey...."





	

Alex strode through Hotel Valhalla with a single purpose in mind: find Samirah and get her to end this madness. Apparently the pissed off look on her face was enough to convince the other einherjar to get out of her way. Well, almost all of them. 

Mallory Keen was practically jogging to try to keep up with the pissed off shapeshifter. "Alex, not to piss you off any more, but where are you going while this angry?"

"Samirah." 

"She's probably at school right now, it's just after lunch."

Alex stopped suddenly and turned to the much shorter redhead. After a few seconds of thought, she agreed and doubled back until she reached the elevator. Mallory slipped in beside her and they went down to the lobby together. "You're coming?"

"Yes."

Together, they strode out of the hotel and into Boston. On the way to King Academy, Alex pulled out her phone and texted her sister to meet them outside.

"Is everything alright?" Sam hurried down the front stairs to them, concern clear on her face.

"No, everything is NOT alright! I need you to talk to your stupid friend and tell him to quit staring at me!" Alex demanded. She either didn't hear or chose to ignore Mallory chuckling behind her.

"Magnus? Oh Alex, honey, he's staring because he's at least half in love with you," Sam grinned, watching as Alex went from angry to confused very quickly. 

She tilted her head to the right, looking at Sam as if she'd grown an extra head. "He's always stared at me though...." her voice seemed smaller, as if she wasn't sure of herself anymore.

"Yes, I know. Mallory, laugh later!"

"You're just mad because you can't laugh right now," Mallory stuck her tongue out at the Valkyrie but suppressed her laughter all the same.

Alex rounded on the Irish girl. "This is funny to you?"

"Sort of. I thought you knew," she shrugged. "If you had told me this was why you needed to see Sam I could've told you back at the hotel and saved you the trip."

"Does everyone know about Magnus' supposed feelings for me?" Alex demanded, hands on her hips.

"Halfborn doesn't but TJ might," Mallory answered.

"Blitz and Hearth do. But beyond them, who knows? Or cares?" Sam shrugged. "The real question is, now that you know, what are you going to do?"

Alex turned away from the other two girls and started pacing along the step she was on, chewing on her lower lip as she thought.

“The thing is, Alex, I’m not positive he knows why he’s staring at you. It’s easy enough for us to see from an outside perspective,” Sam glanced back toward her school’s front doors. “I can come by tonight and talk to him if you still want me to, but I have to get to Physics.”

“Yeah. I’ll see you after dinner then?”

“Absolutely.” Samirah jogged back into King Academy, leaving the two einherjar alone on the front steps. 

Alex continued to pace while Mallory watched. The Irish girl could only be quiet for so long though. “It shouldn’t be this hard to decide what to do, Alex. The important question is, how do you feel about Magnus? Then you wait for Sam to talk to him and come up with a plan based on whatever information she gathers.”

“How could it possibly be that simple?”

“If you want to make it complicated, come up with multiple plans. Like, if you do have feelings for him, come up with plans for what to do if he likes you back or how to seduce him if he doesn’t. Or, if you don’t you can come up with plans for if he does how will you dissuade him? Meanwhile, let’s get back, it’s almost time for combat practice and you know Tuesday’s my favorite day.”

“Free-for-all combat, I remember. Maybe killing some people will help me think.”

Killing people did not help her think, nor did getting killed. Thinking about things other than killing her fellow einherjar is, in fact, what got her killed.

Alex woke up between an empty bed and T.J.’s still-dead body. Sitting in a chair at the foot of her bed was Magnus. “What happened to TJ?” The former Union solider looked like someone had tried to dig a hole in his chest.

“I’m not sure. It happened after I died. Are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You seemed distracted on the field today is all. You don’t normally die before me.”

“Yeah, I guess I was distracted. Is that why you’re sitting at the foot of my bed waiting for me to resurrect?”

“Well, yeah. I was worried about you. Is it anything you want to talk about?”

Alex noted the blush on Magnus’ cheeks before she answered. “No thanks, Maggie.” She smiled as she sat up. “How long until dinner?”

“About an hour. Are you sure?” She glared and he backed off. 

Up in her room a short while later, Alex paced around her atrium. It wasn’t, for her, as simple as Mallory made it seem. Yes, she was very attracted to Magnus and had known she was for a long while. That was part of the reason she tried to keep him at arm’s length. Her heart and ego had been bruised one too many times by letting someone in only to find that they were only attracted to either the male or female side of her, not both. Or worse, only attracted to the novelty of dating a gender-fluid person.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Samirah jogged to catch up to Magnus before he got into the elevator after dinner. She’d brought a new soul to Valhalla that day and so had needed no excuse to show up for dinner.

“Hey Sam,” T.J. saw her first and waved. The rest of floor 19 stopped and waited for her to catch up. 

“Hey guys. How was combat practice?”

“I got impaled. I don’t recommend it,” T.J. answered. 

As the others told her how they’d died and how many they had killed, Sam caught Alex’s eye. Alex flicked a quick glance to Magnus and back again. Sam nodded, she’d noticed his preoccupied answer and intended to ask about what had happened. Content with the answer, Alex reclined back against the wall of the elevator, arms folded over her chest.

Sam pulled Magnus into floor 19’s lounge area almost as soon as they reached the right floor. “Is everything ok, Sam?”

“You tell me. What happened at practice today that’s got you so distracted?”

“Alex died before me.” At Sam’s raised eyebrow, he elaborated. “She never dies before me and this time she only did because she was clearly distracted by something. Something she apparently doesn’t want to talk about but is still bothering her if her demeanor at dinner is anything to go by.”

“Okay, but it was bound to happen Magnus. That she would die before you at least once. You’re getting better and she’s not always on top of her game. Just don’t tell her I said that.” She paused and narrowed her eyes as if something had just occurred to her. “How do you know she was distracted anyway?” He looked away, blushing and mumbled something. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

“I may have been watching her, that’s all.”

“Mm-hm. If that was all then you wouldn’t have blushed just now. Why were you watching my sister, Chase?” Sam tried to be the stern, protective sister with her hands on her hips while internally she was celebrating this minor victory. It looked as if he might be willing to confess his feelings to her with only minimal prodding.

He walked away from her, nervously rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s nothing. I just like watching her.”  
“That only sounds a little stalker-ish.”

“Not like that! Look… just between the two of us, I may or may not have a huge crush on your sister.”

“That’s not helpful. You either do or don’t.”

“I do.”

Sam watched Magnus fidget for a minute. “What about my brother?”

“What?”

“You said you have a crush on my sister. What about when Alex is my brother?”

“Doesn’t change anything for me. Except the words I use, obviously. I realized about a year or so before my mother died that I’m bisexual. Alex is, well whether male or female Alex is amazing.”

“I do not need details on why you think she’s amazing,” Sam held up a hand to stop him before he even started. “I just need to know that you do. So, this is why you keep staring at her?”

“I am not staring at her.”

“Apparently, you are. She asked me earlier today if I knew why you were always staring.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, just maybe focus on battle practice tomorrow and not my sister?”

~~~~~~~~~

Alex sat in front of his pottery wheel, not actually making anything, just watching the empty wheel spin. It had been three days since Samirah had spoken to Magnus about why he was staring. And while he was more than relieved to know that Magnus was attracted to him regardless of his gender, that information did not help him come up with a plan to proceed.

“It shouldn’t be this hard,” Alex muttered. Those words replayed a few times in his head until he realized that he was the one making it this hard. He quickly cleaned up the few supplies he’d pulled out, tossed his apron onto its hook and made his way to Magnus’ room. Hopefully he was in his room and not elsewhere in the hotel or Midgard or somewhere else. 

The door opened seconds after he knocked. “Hey Alex,” Magnus stepped back in invitation for him to come in. He did and he closed the door. “Is everything ok?”

“Of course, why wouldn’t it be?” He may have snapped at him but that was nervousness not any real annoyance. 

“Relax, dude. You just normally don’t come knocking on my door, that’s all.”

Alex smiled a little. “How do you always seem to know?”

“Know what? Which gender you are right now?” He nodded. “I’m not exactly sure. It’s almost as if you change physically without actually changing. It’s kind of like your face looks softer when you’re female. But it’s very subtle. Like right now you have a stronger, more defined jawline then you did yesterday,” he shrugged, more than a little self-conscious of how much he’d been staring at him. “I expect that’s a shapeshifter thing though, right?”

“Yes, just not a change I’m consciously making. I like that you notice it,” he smiled again. “But you’re right, I don’t normally come knocking on your door. I needed to talk to you about the staring thing.”

“Staring thing?” Magnus tensed up, nervous about what Alex would say, or potentially do next. 

“Yes. The thing where you stare at me so much you get yourself killed during battle practice and have come to notice the very slight differences in my face.” 

Magnus’ cheeks burned with embarrassment. He looked away, trying to find some excuse that would help get him out of this situation, so he didn’t see him move but he felt the other boy’s hands fist in his shirt and pull him closer. 

“You don’t have to stop,” Alex murmured, pressing his lips to the shorter boy’s. He pulled back and looked down into blue eyes.

“Yeah?” Magnus was dazed as he looked up at him.

“Yeah,” he leaned down and kissed him again and this time, Magnus responded in kind, wrapping his arms around Alex’s waist and pulling the taller boy closer.

Sometime later, the two boys left and went to the lounge where T.J., Halfborn, Mallory, and Sam had gathered. Sam caught her brother’s eye and raised an eyebrow. At his nod, she grinned and turned to Mallory. 

“Pay up, Keen.”

“What? No!”

“No, what?” Magnus looked between the two girls while Alex glared.

“Are you two a couple now?” Mallory, ever the blunt Irish woman, asked.

“Yeah,” he answered.

“Damn!” She pulled out $5 and passed it to Sam. 

Alex continued to glare at the two of them but sat beside Magnus and joined T.J. and Halfborn’s conversation anyway. And if she ‘accidentally’ beheaded Mallory at battle practice that afternoon, well, it’s not like the einherjar stayed dead in Valhalla.

**Author's Note:**

> So, it's been a long long while since I've written fan fiction but these two proved irresistible to me. Hope you enjoyed it. Also, here I am on Tumblr: http://darkwitchoferie.tumblr.com/


End file.
